Innovative UK energy supplier Tempus Energy announced today that it had closed a £3.78m funding round and appointed a new member to its board. The funding was raised via high net worth individuals and existing shareholders. Combined with a successful seed-funding round in May, the latest round takes the total funding in 2015 to just short of £5million.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151218/297222 ) With a current valuation of over £20m, the company announced that John Coomber, former CEO of the Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC) and former group CEO of Swiss Reinsurance, will join the board.

John Coomberformer CEO ofPension Insurance Corporation said: "Tempus Energy is a pioneer in the global race to unlock customer value from our outdated and inefficient energy systems and I am thrilled to be joining the board."

Based in Camden, Tempus Energy uses algorithms, a smart trading platform, advances in smart controls, IoT, storage and smart meters to help customers harness flexible thermal load in their own assets and building management systems to slash their electricity bills. Tempus Energy became a supply business in March 2015 after discovering electricity suppliers would not use their platform because they were concerned it would disaggregate their generating assets.

Sara Bell, CEO, Tempus Energy said: "Using our innovative supply model to unlock better value from UK energy is good for customers and UK plc. Tempus works hard to deliver value to customers through innovation. I am motivated by the fact that every time we lower our customers' energy bills, we are empowering other British businesses to be more competitive in their own markets."

There is currently very little innovation in the energy supply market but the scale of electricity system inefficiencies are huge and the potential savings to the UK from demand flexibility and balancing technologies are estimated at £8-17bn/year by 2050 and up to €53bn/year in Europe alone.

In 2012, Tempus Energy launched as UK demand-side technology company.

December 2014: Tempus Energy launched a legal challenge to the UK's Capacity Mechanism.

March 2015: Tempus entered UK electricity supply market to prove its demand side business model.

May 2015: Tempus Energy raised £1m.

October 2015: Tempus Energy acquired its 100th UK customer; targets a supply over 30GWhrs electricity to UK customers by March 2016.

About Tempus Energy:

Tempus Energy is a clean-tech start-up and GB electricity retail supplier, headquartered in London. Tempus has developed an innovative demand-side management and trading technology platform which it uses to connect homes and businesses to the cheapest available electricity at any given time. This is called "demand flexibility". Tempus is the UK's first electricity supplier to offer an integrated demand flexibility tariff, bringing cost savings to customers by automatically shifting non time-critical load into cheaper periods, such as off-peak times or when renewable generation is plentiful.